State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Monday that Secretary of State John Kerry wasn’t going all that fast when he fell off his bike in France and broke his right leg.
“He wasn’t going exceptionally fast,” she told reporters. She also said Kerry was at the beginning of his ride, “along the segment that has at times been used on the Tour de France.”
But she had little else to say about the accident over the weekend that cut short Kerry’s four-nation bike tour in Europe, and could threaten progress on the Iran-nuclear talks that are due to finish at the end of the month.
Kerry reportedly hit a curb early on the tour and broke his right leg near Scionzier, France. Harf said she couldn’t say how he landed or what he landed on, and said more of those details might come from Kerry’s medical team. She did say, however, that rumors that Kerry ran into some gravel that caused him to fall are not true.
Kerry stayed overnight in a Switzerland hospital, and was being flown back to Boston on Monday on a C-17 military plane.
Reporters asked several questions about Kerry’s recovery and his ability to participate in the Iran talks. But Harf said only that it’s too early to say what his recovery will look like.
“The secretary is committed to pursuing an aggressive recovery schedule,” she said. “There are a range of possible recovery trajectories with an injury like this, and it’s quite frankly premature to speculate on what that recovery will look like.”
“He and the entire team are absolutely committed to the same timetable, and are working toward June 30th as the deadline for these talks,” she said of the ongoing Iran talks.
When asked if Kerry plans to be in the room as the talks wind down, Harf said, “I believe that he does, yes. Absolutely.” But she also seemed to acknowledge that his participation may have to be over the phone or online, depending on the extent of his injury.
“Now what that looks like, you know, we’re still working out logistics,” she said of the recovery phase. “But absolutely, he is committed to moving forward, working toward the end of this month and the deadline, personally.”
This story was corrected to note that Harf said Kerry was not going “exceptionally” fast.
